Day by day...

You know when you wake up from a bad dream and you just can’t help but Thank God that awful experience was just a dream.  I’m starting to realize that I’m not ever going to wake up from this bad dream.  I’m never going to bring home Lucy.  Her face is constantly on my mind.  This is the picture I've been seeing so much in my mind recently.  She is reaching out to me and wants to come home.

So many of you have asked how I’m doing.  I know you want to hear that I’m doing okay and I am.  I’m okay.  I really don’t have any choice but to be okay.  I can’t have what I want back and I just need to deal with it.  I can’t control what happens but I’m trying to control how I deal with it.  My kids need their mom to ‘get it together’.  So I’ve been spending some time trying to do that.  I took out some aggression on that ugly 1970’s wallpaper in my laundry room that I’ve wanted to rip down since we moved into the house 7 years ago.  It’s gone!  What an accomplishment.  My sweet husband took off some time from work around the holidays and gave me a few days and suggested I go out, go shopping, meet friends for lunch or get a massage.  While that all sounded so tempting, I went and tore up my bathroom and laundry room and repainted and organized.  Not at all what he was expecting (especially since he ended up having to help a bit), but it gave me a lot of time to think and process which is exactly what I needed.  There is some amazing healing in accomplishing what seemed like the impossible task.

I guess I’m realizing that I think I will always be sad about losing Lucy but if I really trust God, then I can’t just sit back and wallow in my own misery.  If I believe the Bible is true then I can’t just pick and choose what part to believe based on my circumstance.  I need to believe that His plans are better than mine and if I say I trust Him, then I need to trust Him that even losing Lucy, is part of a bigger and better plan.  So overall, I’m starting to pull out of my slump a bit but sometimes I see or hear something that just knocks the wind out of me again.

After the holidays, I actually started to feel a little better after some time to slow and process.  Our first day back at coop on Wednesday and Trevin, my three year old, walks into the nursery to see our friend's 10 month old son who is an adorable little Chinese boy, and Trevin says, “Look Mom, I told you Lulu’s not dead, she’s right there.”  Oh, what a sucker punch to the chest.  While I never really expected Trevin to understand too much about death in general let alone death of a little girl he never met, I never expected him to have linked Lulu to any Chinese baby.  Clearly, we need to see more little Chinese babies for him to know there are a few more of them in the world.  Another one of those moments, was January 10th, Lucy's first birthday.  I originally wanted to make it a big day we would celebrate here while she was celebrating in China but I couldn't bring myself to do anything.  The line from the song Lucy by Skillet, "Hey Lucy, I remembered your birthday..." just ran through my mind all day.  We talked through what she must have been doing in heaven for her birthday.  The kids have decided that Lucy got a baby panda (a real one, no stuffed one's in heaven) for her birthday.  In our minds, she had some fabulous adventures on her birthday.   So, there are still moments that just knock me down for a moment, but on the whole, I’m learning to be okay and to trust God a little more.

We’ve all been processing differently.  A few days after Lucy died, Abigail had decided that the next time she sold her jewelry (which she has been selling for a while now to support different orphan ministries), she would give the money to Love Without Boundaries to help some of the other girls and boys who lived with Lucy.  So she has been very busy creating new jewelry to sell at the Miriam’s Heart Into His Fields concert this Saturday, January 18th.  If you’re available, the concert is free admission and you’ll be blessed by the music.  Creating new jewelry and having a mission to honor Lucy’s life has helped Abigail to focus on something positive that she can do that she knows Lucy would love.

Love Without Boundaries has been really wonderful to us and we are hoping to start sponsoring some of the children there while they receive surgery, love and care until they can be matched with a forever family.  We hope to see you on Saturday at 7pm in the Life Center.